Displaying items by tag: Alternative Fuels

Egypt: Khaled Fahmy, the Minister of Environment, has opened a new production line at Arabian Cement Company’s Ain Sokhna plant in Suez. The line uses FLSmidth’s Hotdisc combustion device to allow it to use high levels of alternative fuels, according to the Watani newspaper. The opening was attended by Muhammad Shehab Abdel-Wahab, chief executive of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, Nahed Youssef, head of waste management organisation, as well as a number of representatives of the financiers, and director of the European Investment Bank.

In 2015 Arabian Cement Company commissioned another Hotdisc installation. At the time is said it had a designed fuel mix of 70% coal and 30% alternative fuels, using a mixture of agricultural wastes, municipal sludge, and refuse-derived fuel (RDF).

Poland: LafargeHolcim has celebrated investing over Euro95m at its Kujawy cement plant since 2008. As part of the Pomeranian Special Economic Zone, the plant has had a number of upgrades over the last decade and has created over 60 jobs.

Projects at the site have included spending Euro24m on environmental improvements such as installing new filters, building a new clinker silo and four cement silos, and converting the plant to process alternative fuels. Euro56m has been invested on production upgrades including a new cement grinding mill, a new calciner and new constant monitoring systems. Euro18m has been spent on two bulk loading terminals, a new weighbridge and self-loading systems and a new laboratory.

France: The French cement industry union (SFIC), plus three other professional organisations, has announced that has committed to increase the amount of wood waste used in France’s cement plants. It has committed to increasing the amount used by 90% compared to 2015 by 2020.

90,000t of wood were used as fuel in cement production in 2015. The goal is to use 170,000t in 2020. Four cement plants will act as pilot sites. The wood used must be from the same region as the plant burning it. According to the SFIC, alternative fuels account for 41% of cement fuels used in France.

This week’s Plastics Strategy from the European Commission (EC) presents the cement industry with a narrowing target. If the Plastics Strategy is successful it will prevent plastics waste altogether. This will then eliminate the key calorific content of refuse-derived fuels (RDF) and disrupt co-processing supply chains at cement plants across the continent. If it is too lax then dumping plastics in landfill could become more economically viable, also changing the market dynamic. Neither extreme looks likely at this stage but the European cement industry needs to make its views known.

Cembureau, the European cement association, has done just that today with the publication of a position paper on the subject. It conveniently ignores the top two tiers of the waste hierarchy – prevention and re-use – but it does recognise that ‘high quality recycling’ is the preferred option. This is followed by the target of its lobbying: protecting co-processing. Make no mistake, this is supporting industrial behaviour change with solid environmental benefits. Its areas for policymakers to focus on include protecting co-processing: a ban on landfill; linking energy recovery to recycling; concentrating on the legislation; thinking about material lifespan sustainability benefits; and helping minimise the investment costs for processing facilities.

Providing cool heads prevail, the importance of co-processing plastics as part of any realistic plastics strategy seems unlikely to change any time soon. What’s more likely to be the real target for Cembureau is standardising measures on collection, sorting and material recovery across the European Union (EU). For example, as this column has reported twice in 2017 (GCW288 and GCW324), the issues with waste disposal legislation in Italy have led to various problems in the sector. Waste collectors found it easier to export RDF to Morocco from Italy rather than use it locally in 2016. The slag industry has also reported similar issues with reuse in Italy. The consolidation of the local cement industry following the takeover of Italcementi and Cementir by HeidelbergCement and of Cementizillo by Buzzi Unicem should present a more unified industry approach towards alternative fuels. Backup from the EC could solve the other half of the alternative fuels puzzle in Italy and help to deliver serious change. Ecofys data from 2014 showed the EU co-processing average rate as being 41%, with six countries – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Italy and Greece – having rates below 30%.

Vagner Maringolo of Cembureau outlined the market opportunities for waste uptake at cement plants at the 11th Global CemFuels Conference that took place in Barcelona in February 2017. He started by revealing that plastics represented over 40% of the total share of alternative fuels used in the EU in 2014. A ban on landfilling municipal waste was expected to boost the supply of RDF and a Cembureau/Ecofys study on the market potential of alternative fuels concluded that around 10Mt of waste was co-processed in cement kilns in the EU28 in 2015. This represented around 2% of total combustible waste each year but it represented 10% of all of the energy recovery from waste in the EU. In other words co-processing plastics waste offers a very attractive means for the EU to meet its sustainability targets.

However, before Cembureau and the cement industry starts popping the (reusable) champagne corks, consider the wider picture. China has banned imports of foreign waste in 2018 including RDF from the UK, a major exporter. Unless new markets are found this may impact the price of RDF in Europe. Brexit is another example how of European waste markets might be disrupted in the medium-term. Cement producers want a steady supply of cheap fuels but if the providers can’t make enough money from their products then the market will fail. The tightrope for Cembureau to walk with plastics is to promote RDF use and secure its supply. Persuading the EC to support this may involve some wobbling along the way.

Belgium: Cembureau, the European cement association, has published a position paper outlining its stance European Commission’s plastics strategy. The association wants policymakers to ensure any plastic waste that has a calorific value that can be recovered as a fuel source is not landfilled. At present there are differences in waste management policies across the member states of the European Union.

Other points that Cemburea wants to highlight include: a ban on landfill of recoverable and recyclable waste; recognition that cement plants can treat different waste streams such as plastics and simultaneously recycle them as material in the manufacturing process of cement and recover them as energy; the specific relevance that co-processing offers the unique opportunity of a simultaneous energy and material recovery; and the potential to minimise investment costs in dedicated facilities.

In January 2018, the European Commission published a dedicated Plastics Strategy as part of the Circular Economy package. The strategy indicates that there is currently a low rate of recycling or reuse of plastics with most of it going to landfill or used in incinerators.

Spain: Cementos Cosmos has stated its intention to ask the Castilla León Board for permission to burn tyres in the kiln at its plant in Oral Sarriana. The move has already been met with resistance from the local Bierzo Aire Limpio platform, which has raised concerns about the effects of tyre burning on the local agricultural sector as well as ‘the alarming rates of contamination, cancer and premature deaths in a region closed in by mountains.’

This is despite the plant already having permission to burn paper and plastic waste. The increase in alternative fuels, ideally up to a 70% thermal substitution rate, is intended to reduce the plant’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Canada: As it awaits industrial approval from the Province to burn tyres at its Nova Scotia cement plant, Lafarge Canada says it has spent US$830,000 to install emissions monitoring systems. The company says its new equipment measures plant emissions such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and total hydrocarbons every 10 seconds.

Rob Cumming, Lafarge's environment director, says the company's proposed one year pilot project at its Brookfield plant will allow it to gather the scientific evidence needed to assure the public that it is safe to use scrap tyres as a replacement for coal.

In October 2017, the Environment Department said it was reviewing the company's application and would make a decision on the project within 60 days. The project has drawn criticism from residents near the plant, environmental groups and Nova Scotia's NDP, which has called on the Liberal government to ban tyre burning.

Canada: The New Democratic Party has called for a ban of burning tyres in Nova Scotia. The opposition political party held a news conference with opponents of the government's decision in July 2017 to approve a one-year pilot project allowing Lafarge Canada to burn tyres for energy at the company's Brookfield cement plant, according to the Canadian Press newspaper. No tyres have been burned at the plant so far as the cement producer waits for industrial approval of the project from the provincial government.

Mark Butler of the Ecology Action Centre said the government’s decision was based on a Dalhousie University engineering study that was too narrow in its focus and wasn't peer reviewed. However the government has said that it used several technical studies to inform its decision. A group of local residents also started legal action in August 2017 on the grounds that the project violated the province's Environment Act.

Ireland: On 29 August 2017 an oral hearing began to hear submissions regarding plans by Irish Cement to use alternative fuels for energy in its plant in Limerick. The company is seeking to move away from using fossil fuels as a main source of material in its cement kiln in Mungret and to use recovered waste and tyres instead.

A number of local residents and members from action group Limerick Against Pollution (LAP) held a protest outside the hearing. LAP spokesperson Tim Hourigan said that residents were concerned about the possible release of toxins from the proposed process and that they were opposed to it going ahead. The hearing was also attended by local businessman and racehorse owner JP McManus, who said he was ‘concerned’ about the plans.

Representatives from Irish Cement told the hearing that the proposal would improve the long-term viability of the plant as well as help to reduce CO2 emissions and the plant’s reliance on imported fossil fuels. The hearing is expected to last until Friday 1 September 2017.

Canada: A group of residents close to the Lafarge Canada Brookfield plant has launched a court challenge arguing the Nova Scotia government's approval of a plan to burn tyres as an alternative fuel at the plant violated the Environment Act.

In his application for a judicial review, lawyer William Mahody wrote that Environment Minister Iain Rankin didn't properly assess the impact of emissions from the Lafarge plant in Brookfield on surrounding areas, stating that was a ‘strong potential for adverse effects’ on surface water, human health and wildlife from the project. The plan has run into criticism from environmental groups, municipal councils and area residents, who prevented a similar proposal a decade ago.Nova Scotia’s waste diversion agency has shifted a supply of at least 280,000 tyres per year to Lafarge and recently approved the company's environmental application for a one-year pilot project to incinerate the tyres as fuel.

Lafarge says it can't comment on the judicial review. However, Robert Cumming, the environmental director at Lafarge, says research conducted off-site by a Dalhousie University engineer suggests the use of scrap tyres will lower the plant's CO2 emissions. "Our pilot project seeks to validate this evidence gathered from scientific reports and in Dalhousie University laboratories. The research team and Lafarge have committed to sharing the results with the community."